Another replacement Note 7 has reportedly gone up in smoke

Having one production run of your latest smartphone turn out to be unsafe is bad enough, but if Samsung's replacement Note 7s are faulty as well then the company has a huge problem on its hands.

Reports from the US say a replacement handset has caught on fire, even though it wasn't plugged in at the time. Michael Klering and his wife apparently woke up to a room full of smoke, and Klering was later treated for smoke inhalation.

It follows an incident earlier this week where a Note 7 caught fire and caused an aeroplane to be evacuated on the ground. Again the phone was one that had been replaced by Samsung and was deemed to be safe.

Safety first

Samsung is still investigating the first incident and hasn't responded to the second as yet - it's possible that these phones have been damaged in some way after being sent out by Samsung, causing them to malfunction.

On the other hand, if there's a genuine problem with the second batch of Note 7s Samsung is rolling out, then the South Korean company is going to have to go back to the drawing board again and try to convince users it's capable of fixing the problem.

What makes these hardware problems even more annoying is that the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 is an excellent phone. We'll have to wait for the manufacturer to investigate this week's reports before giving a final verdict on whether the handset is actually safe to own.